


Ache

by robotsdance



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Cannibalism, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-27
Updated: 2014-09-27
Packaged: 2018-02-18 07:33:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2340257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/robotsdance/pseuds/robotsdance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Will Graham has never been in love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ache

Will wakes up at 3:15am and stares at the painfully grey hospital room ceiling as he has every night since they stopped helpfully sedating him. He knows wherever overseas Hannibal is, he too is getting up to start his day, though whatever timezone Hannibal is in it’s no doubt a reasonable hour to do so. He makes a terrible joke about jet lag to himself and a fragment of a laugh breaks from his dry throat and is promptly swallowed by the empty room. 

He glances around the room out of habit. He keeps expecting to wake up and find Hannibal in the chair beside his hospital bed, patiently waiting to have a pleasant chat about how he practically cut Will in half. They have a pattern: Will experiences violence and then he and Hannibal talk about it. Will commits violence and then they talk about it. Hell, Will imagines violence and then they talk about it. Like a morbid version of Pavlov’s dog, splash blood around Will Graham and he goes running towards Hannibal. But Hannibal made sure Will can’t run to him this time. 

Will tries to shift himself into a position comfortable enough to trick his mind into leaving Hannibal to his morning routine so he can fall back to sleep. Not that Will has any tangible reason to be well rested for his day of lying in bed. Yet another psychiatrist is scheduled to check in on him this afternoon. He figures he would enjoy that part of his day a lot better if he is exhausted enough to sleep though it.

Everyone wants him to talk about this thing that happened to him like it was out of the ordinary. It doesn’t feel that way to Will. Hannibal doing what he did feels correct. Maybe even inevitable. Compared to the other things Hannibal has done to Will, slicing into his gut and leaving him to bleed out was almost a kindness, though Will tries not to think about it that way too much.

His plan is to ignore today’s psychiatrist until she decides their time is up, just as he has ignored every other therapist who has sat in that lonely chair, but she isn’t quite like the others. As soon as she arrives he can tell she feels sorry for him, but it’s not the same flavour of sympathy the other therapists wear. He can feel the depth of her pity in his chest and wishes she would look away.

She makes idle chit-chat about nothing and he grunts passively in return for what feels like at least an hour. She manages to get a couple of one word answers out of him (“Are you looking forward to seeing your dogs?” “Yes.” “Do you know when you’re going home?” “No.”) It’s nothing Will hasn’t done with every other person who has sat in that chair. He’s certain she’s almost ready to give up for the day.

“It’s okay if you don’t hate him Will.”

“Who said I don’t hate Hannibal?!” Will fires back, snapping at the bait like a hungry shark, all of his carefully constructed non-answers leaving him in an instant, “I hate him. I definitely hate him. What kind of monster would I be to not hate the-“ he swallows roughly “person who does what he does?”

Her tone has a practiced kindness to it, “I’m just saying it’s also perfectly normal if you don’t hate him. Whatever you’re feeling is a valid reaction to the trauma you’ve suffered.” 

“I tried to kill him. More than once.” This feels like evidence, worthy of being put in a sealed ziplock bag to keep it safe from contamination. He needs her to know that he traumatized Hannibal too.

She doesn’t say a word but he can feel her next question in the worst way.

 _Why didn’t you?_

“Alana’s the one who was sleeping with him. Maybe you should talk to her.” The words spit out of his mouth before he can think. He's deflecting. He needs to get it together. He looks at his feet and rattles through a three point explanation as to why what he said was completely inappropriate and that he would prefer it if she forgot he said it.

She does not call him out on his woefully obvious deflection and outright defensiveness. He would prefer she did. 

There’s something in her posture and her tone and the way she is leaning away from him ever so slightly. It’s in the way she’s watching him, but not quite looking at him, like she’s already seen too much. He can hear the way she’s rephrasing variations of the same question again and again in her mind, looking for the right way to ask him about the word she’s been so careful to avoid saying aloud.

He does not give her the opportunity. She will not speak it, she will not ask him the question she’s skillfully trying to get him to answer. He stares forcefully at the ceiling as he tells her he is very tired. She understands it is time for her to leave and she does so with barely another word. Will should be relieved. 

But long after she has left the room her unspoken question rings in Will’s ears as if she had shouted it at him. He is tense and furious with himself, his fingers drumming restlessly on the side of the hospital bed. He should have just let her ask him. He has nothing to hide. Now it looks like she was on to something, which she wasn’t. He regrets not telling her how wrong she was to dare to think that he had ever- that he could possibly-

He should have let her ask so that the only mention of that ridiculous word in her session notes would be a single unimportant statement squished between other irrelevant crap:

_Will Graham has never been in love._

——

The first thing Will does for himself when he is released from the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane is to take his dogs on a long walk. He basks in their happiness as they run around him, charging ahead and then bounding back towards him as if to make sure he hasn’t disappeared from their lives again. The whole walk is a flurry of infectious tail wagging and joyful barking and countless paw prints running back and forth to circle him with delight. 

The following day when Will gets home he goes through his usual routine. He walks and feeds the dogs and then he wanders from room to room without purpose, still feeling like his house had tripled in size during his absence. His world is no longer the size of that bare cell in Baltimore. He is a free man again. He can go wherever he wants.

He picks up his coat and his gun and goes to see Hannibal Lecter.

——

As soon as Will closes his eyes the stag is with him, as if he had been there all along, waiting for Will to join him in the thicket. Together they are all antlers and shadow and dust and bone as they journey through the darkened forest. Together they become conductors of light as they kill, familiar blood pooling underfoot.

Will wakes up breathing hard, blood pounding in his ears, his hands gripping the sheets tightly.

The dream was violent and visceral but it was not a nightmare.

——

Will has his glasses with him at all times when he leaves his house. He needs them to drive, which certainly helps enforce this pattern, but it’s his need to have his glasses as a tool to limit eye contact that solidifies this habit. It’s a lot easier to not lose his train of thought if he can look at the rims of his glasses instead of the faces of the people in front of him. He doesn’t always wear his glasses for this purpose but ever since he first got glasses as a teenager, he needs to have the option available to him.

Tonight Will’s glasses are resting on the dashboard of his car. He never bothers to bring them to his appointments with Hannibal anymore. Hannibal is so far inside his head that using glasses to hide from him would be like a burning man holding up a wooden shield to forest fire. 

Hannibal asks him questions like he is slicing off tiny bits of him with a sharp knife and feasts on his answers, savouring each word as if they were presented to him on a silver plate. Hannibal will consume every piece of Will he can get a hold of, though Will knows innately this will never be enough. Hannibal wants more. Needs more. He needs to own Will completely. Will can feel it in the way he leans in and pulls back moments later, afraid to give away too much of what’s inside him. But there’s nothing left to give away. Will knows all of his secrets now.

It doesn’t occur to Will to lie during their little chats, not when Hannibal devours the truth off Will’s tongue like a starving man. He sees himself through Hannibal’s eyes as he speaks about the stag running along side him through the snow. Like the stag, Will is a creature of light and potential, worthy of Hannibal’s utmost attention. Will is transfixed by Hannibal’s appetite for detail as he describes the way he ripped Hannibal apart with his teeth, unwilling to pull away from Hannibal’s fascination with all things Will Graham. It’s intoxicating to see Hannibal recognizing himself in another person, and Will can feel the pieces of himself that Hannibal craves most reflecting back at him with all the intensity of a summer storm. 

Hannibal can’t get enough information about how Will is fantasizing about killing him, which is fine by Will. His imagination is locked in a cycle that provides him with endless variations of the same theme. The same blood on his hands night after night, the same hungry look in Hannibal’s eyes when he describes it the following day. Will likes feeling the thrill Hannibal feels when he knows Will has the potential to kill him and enjoy it. In return Will drinks in Hannibal’s admiration like he’s been lost in the desert for days.

No matter how much Will says in his hour, Hannibal is still hungry when it’s time for Will to leave. Will imagines him sitting at his desk writing his session notes like he’s licking sauce from his fingers.

——

They leave the stable as soon as they are under no obligation to be there. Hannibal subtly guides Will back to the car they came in. It’s not Will’s car but Hannibal offers him the driver’s seat, holding the keys in his outstretched hand. Will declines without making eye contact.

They do not speak and they do not turn on the radio. Will’s body is full of feeling (his and Peter’s mostly) but his mind is strangely blank. He watches the wires between the hydro poles arc up and down as they drive past. The visual rhythm of the passing landscape blurs with the vibration of the car on the worn pavement to lull him into a content haze that he pretends has nothing to do with the knowledge that there is another person there with him, breathing and being and accepting him completely. 

Hannibal does not question him about his actions or ask him about his feelings. That will come later. Soon they will sit down and talk about the weight of the trigger being pulled and how Will regrets only that his action did not have the desired effect. Will is comforted by the inevitability of this discussion. Like the next gentle dip in the wire suspended between two fixed points, it is part of the path laid out before him.

——

Alone on his porch with a glass of whisky as he watches his dogs mill around the yard he settles on the gentle understanding that he wants to catch Hannibal Lecter. He repeats it silently to himself, trying it on for size. _‘I want to catch Hannibal Lecter.’_ Will can accept the truth of that statement. Regardless of how true _‘I want to kill Hannibal Lecter’_ can feel in his mind and body, it inevitably fades to something closer to _‘I wish I wanted to kill Hannibal Lecter’_ whenever he finds himself in a position to make good on it. So he tells himself that he wants to catch Hannibal Lecter, whatever it takes. And if he enjoys doing whatever it takes, that’s the price he has to pay.

——

Will sits across from Hannibal at his dinner table. The lights are low and the murder art Hannibal calls food has been placed carefully in front of them. It looks delicious and tastes even better and Will doesn’t bother asking what type of meat it is. He knowingly joins Hannibal in this particular sin of omission tonight.

The air cracks with the potential of a very specific ‘will they or won’t they’ variety, their quiet conversation rising just above the simmering understanding that one day there might just be one of them, leaving the other covered in blood and alone in ways that will take years to process. Will chews slowly and wonders which part of him Hannibal would eat first: his heart or his brain. Will watches Hannibal take a measured sip of wine and ponders if Hannibal’s refined palate will be able to taste his ownership in Will’s flesh the way Will can feel it crawling around inside him.

Will looks at the way Hannibal delicately brings his fork to his mouth and knows his body would not be posed and left for Jack and the FBI to find. Hannibal’s memory palace is where he will stand for all eternity, long after his flesh has graced Hannibal’s tongue. He closes his eyes, overwhelmed by the grandeur of his final resting place. Here he is protected by imposing architecture, delicate and beautiful in appearance but built to endure. Harsh sunlight filters through stained glass to warm his skin in this sacred place. A cathedral of Will Graham, worshiped and revered even in death. He swallows and feels indestructible at the thought.

——

Randall Tier crashing through his window is Hannibal’s version of flowers with a note on them saying, “Sorry I stopped you from killing a man the other day.”

Will accepts Hannibal’s exquisite gift wholeheartedly. 

——

Will and Hannibal have retired to the sitting room after a long day where they mirror each other from opposite armchairs. There are some remnants of a fire, glowing coals and a lingering warmth that has little to do with the wine they’ve been sipping. Their conversation has faded into an easy silence.

The kill sits calmly in Will’s body. He is still and sated. His hands ache the way sore muscles do after a good workout, in the way that remind him he earned this.

Will does not think about how to be the perfect lure in this moment. He does not think about Jack or The Plan (as much as their rough sketch of a plan could be considered one). He does not think about the person he just ate. Likewise, he does not dwell on Hannibal’s intentions either. That would not be worth his time. Hannibal doesn’t work towards a single goal. He’s opportunistic, adapting constantly. He’s not working towards anything specific. He has no fixed point that defines success. 

_Except this_ , part of him offers from nowhere in particular. The two of them, together after a kill and a good meal. Hannibal would work for a thousand years to share another moment like this with him.

Will lets his eyes fall closed as he tilts his head back to rest against the back of the armchair. He feels Hannibal’s gaze slide down his exposed neck and it feels like home.

——

“Have you got _anything?_ ” Jack asks him. He leaves off the qualifying phrase ‘that we can use’ from the end of his question deliberately. Will knows he’s being given the opportunity to exceed Jack’s low expectations. 

Will shakes his head while looking determinedly at the filing cabinet behind Jack. He does not want to face Jack’s disappointment head on. He especially does not want to see his recent actions through Jack’s trained eyes. He has nothing. Nothing useful. Nothing tangible. Not a shred of evidence. Not a hint of a confession. Nothing that wasn’t spoken exclusively in a secret language just for Will. 

Jack sighs and there’s a fraction of eye contact between them and Will can feel how much Jack wants to catch Hannibal. How much he wants to bring him to justice. How much he wants Hannibal to die. Will envies his certainty. 

Fear claws up Will’s spine, settling in the back of his skull in a way that makes his left hand twitch and his pulse creep ever-faster. He is between two fixed points and it’s agonizingly clear this can’t go on forever. Like that theoretical cat in a box, both alive and dead, Will is both Hannibal’s and Jack’s until someone looks inside.

Under the fluorescent lights of Jack’s office, Will is afraid. A reckoning is coming and Will has no idea whose it will be.

——

Will dreams about the hot rush of fresh blood spurting on to his face. It’s Hannibal’s blood (in Will’s mind it’s always Hannibal’s blood). This time Hannibal is bound to the ladder in his office, his throat opening under Will’s influence with ease. In the dream Will opens his mouth to the blood and he wakes with the taste of absolution still on his tongue.

The dream was warm but his sweat-soaked shirt is cold, and after a glance at the clock and a moments consideration he stumbles towards the shower as two of his dogs follow behind him. After ten minutes under scalding water he feels less sweaty but no less bloody. He will feel the blood on his skin until he sees Hannibal again. It’s Hannibal’s blood, and like all blood on Will’s hands, it is Hannibal’s prerogative to cleanse him of it.

——

Will feels like a liar in the room with both Freddie and Jack. To Freddie he is still the murdering psychopath who wants to kill her. Her immediate fear may be fading due to the presence of Jack Crawford, but she’s too smart to dismiss it all together. Freddie has seen a version of Will Graham that Jack has not. She’s seen Hannibal’s Will, and she can see some measure of truth in him.

But now Will is blurring back into the man Jack needs him to be: the man who catches killers, not the man who is one. Jack is explaining his version of everything to her. They have a plan. They want her in on it. 

“Will needs to kill you,” Will hears Jack tell Freddie. Will is very careful to bury the tiny part of him that’s disappointed he won’t get to do it for real.

——

In all of his life, Will Graham has never given a more perfect gift than the cut of meat he places on Hannibal’s kitchen counter.

——

Will takes a swig of mouthwash and immediately regrets it. Little shards of bird bone recently made a crime scene of the out of the inside of his mouth and the alcohol in the mouthwash is reigniting the evidence like a black light.

It’s agony, but he swishes for the full 45 seconds before spitting into the sink.

——

It’s late but he needs to clean off the dogs before he goes to bed. He grounds himself in the practical to keep himself from breaking by gathering a handful of towels and fixing himself a drink before ushering the pack outside. He fills the metal basin on his porch with warm water and doggy shampoo as the dogs watch him with mild interest. 

His hands tremble in the soapy water. He’s upset that this is what gets to him, not the taste of human flesh lingering on his tongue, not the potential of fatherhood being ripped away from him again, not the manipulation or the violence or the fact that even now he can’t make himself hate Hannibal. No. He’s upset his dogs were a part of this.

Mason deserves more than he got. His dogs deserve better than Mason Verger.

He whimpers an apology into Scout’s neck as he rinses Mason’s blood out of her fur.

——

Will wonders if there have been others like him. Will knows Hannibal plays with his patients. He is far from the first Hannibal encouraged violence in, and not the first he committed violence against. This week alone, Hannibal was casting his web over Margot, Mason, and Will, drawing them together just to see what would happen. 

But deep down Will knows that he is the first to see Hannibal completely and be allowed to live. Nobody looks at Hannibal Lecter the way Will looks at him. This much is clear. Will sees Hannibal as he is and is still involved, still holding his gaze, still becoming. Will knows this should terrify him, but it makes him feel like the person Hannibal believes he can be.

——

His grip on the understanding _‘I want to catch Hannibal Lecter’_ is like water held in his bare hands, every time he looks down to check on it, there’s less than there was before. He wants to want to catch Hannibal. There are more logical reasons for this than he cares to list right now. Yet every time Will thinks about it his hands are wet with the evidence of his motivation, but he doesn’t feel it anymore. Not the way he used to. Not the way that used to feel absolute.

He wants Jack to live. He needs Alana to live. He needs Hannibal to live. And there’s a part of him that wants Hannibal to get away. Just remove himself from their lives so maybe, just maybe, they can all continue to live them. It pains him that he includes Hannibal in this category. By all accounts Hannibal should have lost his right to live as he chooses ages ago. The plan is crumbling and everyone is in very real danger and he cares about all of them. He just wants everyone to live. 

He picks up the phone.

——

Even with a knife in his gut and Hannibal’s anguish amplifying in his heart Will Graham does not pull away from Hannibal Lecter. He looks into his soul and feels everything right until the moment he feels nothing at all.

——

It’s 7:30 in the evening, the hospital is quiet, and Will closes his eyes and sits down across from an empty chair in his mind. The red and beige curtains let enough of the lingering sunlight in to the room to dance upon the dust in the air. Hannibal’s office is empty, nothing has moved since Will visited at this time last week. But this is Will’s standing appointment, and as per the policy, it will continue to be his until he or Hannibal formally cancels it.

He sits for the hour in silence. When his time is up he rises and leaves without looking back.

He’ll be back next week. It’s his hour after all. 

——

There’s a knot in his stomach every time he thinks about Abigail or Jack or Alana that has nothing to do with the stitches holding him together. He feels responsible, as if Hannibal’s violence is his own.

——

“Show me,” Will demands, anger surging through his veins as if that’s what he is being given intravenously. 

The nurse shakes his head, already knowing he has said too much. He shouldn’t have mentioned the increase in security around Will’s room since-

“Show me,” Will repeats, “Please.” It sounds a lot more like a threat than a request. Will doesn’t care.

The nurse caves and pulls up Tattle Crime on his phone. He winces at the screen before reluctantly turning it so that Will can see.

Freddie Lounds has evidently been to see him outside scheduled visiting hours. There is a punchy headline and a whole article that follows but Will can’t stop looking at the photograph, floored by the brutality in Freddie’s version of journalism. In the picture he is very unconscious, all tubes and bandages and stitches. She’d taken the liberty of pulling his hospital gown out of the way, no doubt to get a better shot of the wreckage. Humiliation threatens to overwhelm his senses, he can feel his face getting hot and his eyes starting to sting. He looks so fragile lying there, naked and clinging to life. He can’t stand it. 

He knows wherever Hannibal is, he has already seen the photo. Somehow that makes the indignity of it all that much worse.

——

Will wakes up at 3:15 in the morning yet again and wonders if Hannibal can feel the way Will is haunting him as he goes about his day.

——

Will had begged the doctors to let him go home, to at least let him rest in his own bed. They were worried he might over-exert himself, but he has no intention of doing so. He had passed all of their tests to be released so they had agreed to let him go home on the condition Will would be visited regularly by a nurse. A therapist or two would also be visiting on a separate rotation, no doubt judging his capacity to talk formally to the FBI about what happened. He’s in no rush to jump though the hoops to pass that particular test.

He places a lap table over over his torso before calling the dogs over to join him on his bed. This way the still-healing wound is protected by a freestanding structure and a wayward paw won’t accidentally send him back to the hospital. 

The dogs seem to understand he is exhausted as they hop up on to the bed and cuddle up next to him. He pets each of them in turn as they revel in his presence. The littlest one lies near his shoulder and licks his chin.

For the first time in a long time, Will does not feel himself to be purely Hannibal’s design.

——

Will misses food. The recovery diet is strict and bland: a set list of pre-approved foods that are easy to digest. He is bored with all of them.

He presses his hands against his face and pretends not to know exactly what kind of meat he’s craving. 

——

 _‘I will find Hannibal Lecter’_ resonates through Will Graham like a song stuck in his head. This is the idea he can feel truth in. His feelings around Hannibal are a violent storm, but at the centre is the absolute and unchanging fact: _‘I will find Hannibal Lecter’_. 

_‘I will find Hannibal’_ is especially useful because it does not require him to commit to what happens when he does. Kill him, catch him, the other options he can not bring himself to name, all of them hinge on Will finding Hannibal. And he will. Not today. Not for a while. But there is no one in the world better suited to find Dr. Frankenstein than Frankenstein’s monster.

——

The stag is gone from his dreams, but Will still wanders through the shadows and the starlight without his antlered guide. 

He has never felt so alone.

——

Will catches his reflection as he pulls off his shirt and can’t help but interpret the evidence written on his torso: If Hannibal had ever wanted him dead, he wouldn’t be standing here with Hannibal’s forgiveness carved into his skin.

Will traces along the scar tissue with his finger and searches the darkness for the hatred he knows he should feel for the man who did this to him. As always, he finds something much worse.

He won’t let it be true. He tells himself what he needs to be the truth, just like every other time he strays and considers the possibilities. He forces it through his head until it burns through him, like a mantra, like a heartbeat, like a cold indisputable fact:

_Will Graham has never been in love._


End file.
